I do not believe the AA Flight system is beneficial to AA and I questioned the politics and lack of transparency involved, and was proven 100% correct. I certainly was not alone in that regard. The Vacaville fiasco was just part of a continuum of issues dating back to last season.
Someone recently opined that kids should all just play 'A' because AA and A isn't that different. I don't think that opinion is based in reality or experience. The difference between 'A' and 'AA' is substantial, and there is no need to bring opinions into it. Most clubs have AA and A teams, and sometimes those teams practice and scrimmage. They can tell you how those scrimmages go. If Peewee AA teams were to play their house Bantam A teams in a no-check game, a lot of the AA teams would beat their Bantam A teams. This is not to say that there aren't some really good kids in 'A', because there are always kids in 'AA' who would do well in 'AAA'.
In general the difference is that at 'AA' and 'AAA' there is more overall parity. Kids have the puck on their stick for less time, and the speed of the game and the level of defensive play and back checking is much higher. Obviously the goaltending tends to be better as well. Before people lose their minds over these statements I want to repeat that these are aggregate statements and not a value judgement as to the ability of any individual kids. You can see that year to year kids are able to progress from one level to another, sometimes across age divisions and letter boundaries and have success. Nobody should take these statements personally as an insult to their kid. It just happens to be that in general AA teams are substantially better than A teams, who are substantially better than BB, on down the line.
Every so often a team for whatever reason isn't allowed to play AA when they clearly are AA level. Or in AA this year, there is a Bantam AAA team playing in AA, for completely understandable, justifiable and well within the rules reasons.
That essentially ruins things for everyone else, as those teams cruise through the season demolishing most everyone they face. Sure they might stumble on a particular day, and there might even be a giant upset that occurs, but more often than not, what everyone expects to happen, happens and David does not slay Goliath.
Every time this occurs it astounds me how little regard there is for the rest of the teams (as many as 18+) who were correctly placed in the appropriate level, who essentially have their season ruined by an uncaring CAHA organization who prioritizes things entirely based on the number of A's in your division. So long as this is going to be the reality, it behooves people to want to see their kids improve and have a realistic option for moving them into AAA, but in California this just isn't possible for the vast majority of kids, and that is the main problem.
For youth hockey to grow in California, the AAA level needs to grow, and not be artificially limited the way it is currently. The best thing for 99% of kids is to be playing other kids in their birth year. This is what AAA offers, and is the best way to get an idea of how your kid is developing vs their peers. If there were more local AAA teams to play there would be more AAA games that involve a drive and not plane fare, hotels and missed school days. Over time more kids would be included and the average level of play would improve. But CAHA says this is wrong, and they need to limit AAA.
It's a nice fantasy, that people will all in unison just move their kids to 'A' as a CAHA protest, but that simply isn't going to happen. Every season there is a team or even a few at the top or bottom of any division that could participate and perhaps in some cases benefit from having moved up or down. But for the most part, teams are in the divisions they are in, because they wouldn't face any competition or experience any challenge or growth if they were in a lower division, and that is very much true in 'AA'.
In general, older teams are more successful in competition. This is proven time and time again. The reality of AA is that you have every sort of age mix possible and thus the likelihood of playing kids older is much greater when you are a 1st year player, and the results are often predictable.
It appears that what is going to happen with the Flight system in AA is that it is going to start to become a place for younger teams to slot in at AA. At the Peewee level, AA is (ab)used by the AAA franchise clubs to get their "future AAA minor" Peewee kids a chance to face a higher level of competition.
That may or may not benefit those kids, but it surely does very little for the older kids who have to face them, and the stupidity of the way games are often officiated, with the refs essentially protecting the younger kids in complete ignorance of the actual rulebook and legal body contact. This year in AA, the Ducks managed to maneuver their 06/07 team into Flight1. They then went on to get beat up all season by the legit flight1 teams, came in last, and on the way lost to Flight2 teams 3x, while also managing by some strange coincidence to never ever face the +80 goal differential Flight2 team. Funny how that happened BTW, considering that team played every other socal team multiple times.
Which brings me to the Flighting. Lots of people were concerned that bias would lead to bad flighting as well as deny the inevitable outcomes that occur each season as there are always teams that start the season behind others which have an early season advantage in coach and roster continuity, only to develop into playoff contenders by season end. CAHA basically just lied about this, and admitted later that they flighted teams pre-jamboree and really only looked at jamboree results to determine whether or not teams on their bubble list should be moved.
And how did they do?
Peewee AA, Flight2 team won playin 5-2
Bantam AA, Flight2 team won playin 4-0
U-16 AA, Flight 2 team lost playin 3-4
Well done CAHA, take a victory lap. Your emergency "well if we made a small booboo this will fix it" playin mechanism just validates that people told you they were not confident in your assessment system, and for good reason. Sure it's nice to goto playdowns, but that wasn't the point -- the point was that CAHA sold everyone that placement would ensure more competition for everyone, but all you did was screw over teams that deserved to be in the top flight and denied them the very thing this system was supposed to insure.
Furthermore, as the season started for Peewee AA, there were 4 Norcal teams. We played 1! All season. One was dropped to A, and the other 3 were placed in Flight1. Again, CAHA you exist to provide scheduling for Norcal and Socal teams to face each other. You have no other reason for being, and if you now are primarily interested in finding ways to make sure that far fewer socal teams play the Norcal teams, you should go back to your origination story and try and find the thread you've lost along the way.
I don't know the Bantam teams the way you all do, but in talking to some of my friends who have kids in the division, as well as looking at results, it looks like Bantam had multiple teams that were misplaced, and I would have to say at this point that the same was true in PeeweeAA. CAHA's evaluation system should get an F this year.
Next year CAHA says it's going to do better. The question is, why should anyone believe them?